Have you ever wondered about the history of the food you eat?
Join us online for a conversation about the food adventures of European settler colonists in the Americas, and reconsider your own relationship with food.
Historian Dr Rachel Winchcombe, University of Leeds, talks about the impact that new environments, new foods, and encounters with Indigenous peoples had on the emotions, health and identities of early European settler colonists. Rachel will be joined by plant scientist Professor Amanda Bamford, University of Manchester, who will discuss how the same foods are now shaping debates about sustainability and environmental change.
The film premiered on Thursday November 19th at 11am. Watch it in full below:
Watch a recording of the Q&A:
N.B. The featured image on this page is taken from Theodore de Bry’s 1594 edition of the Italian conquistador Girolamo Benzoni’s Historia del Mundo Nuovo. Dr Rachel Winchcombe writes:
“The image depicts an Indigenous woman, who Benzoni claimed was the wife of a local cacique or chief, presenting European conquistadors with a basket of fruit. Benzoni’s account was highly critical of Spanish colonisation and de Bry’s images that accompany the text should be read in this light. In this image, the European colonisers are represented as entirely masculine, their aggression alluded to by the many swords and muskets that dominate the scene. The Indigenous population is depicted as wholly female, naked, and submissive. These images are therefore coloured by propagandistic motivations and are not necessarily an accurate representation of real-life European encounters with Indigenous people.”
Food in the New World 